


Devil Eyes

by ChiaRoseKuro



Series: In Your Galaxy [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Blood and Gore, Child Neglect, Demon Hinata Shouyou, Discrimination, Gen, Horror, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mass Death, Minor Character Death, Pre-Relationship, Prompt Fic, Psychological Horror, Songfic, Suicidal Thoughts, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:15:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22844665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChiaRoseKuro/pseuds/ChiaRoseKuro
Summary: Tobio is the only child in their village, willowy and young in a way nobody else in the village is. They say he ate their unborn to sustain himself, when his family abandoned him as they should.Devil,they spit in his face, and Tobio had almost thought that his name.Kageyama Tobio does not know what happiness is—not when he lives on the outskirts of his village and barely remembers his own name. He longs for a day when someone will smile at him, but where can he go? What can he do, when he has nothing left to him?But then, one night, the one they call the devil meets another devil, face to face. And when he looks into bright, fiery eyes—he sees something more than just a devil and a harbinger of death.( after everyone left, I opened my eyes )
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Kageyama Tobio, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Series: In Your Galaxy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642276
Comments: 13
Kudos: 90





	Devil Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This was only meant to be a drabble (my version of one, which is less than a thousand words) but the idea... obviously sprinted away from me, hollering at the top of its lungs. I don't currently have any plans to continue this story, but you're more than welcome to persuade me otherwise.
> 
> If you're not a fan of fairly explicit gore (ranging from broken limbs to the mass atomizing of bodies), child abuse/neglect, one somewhat graphic instance of vomiting and a heavily implied underage human/demon relationship, then you're best off clicking the 'back' button. Nobody is going to judge you for turning your back on a squeamish story I wrote on a song high, but I will most definitely judge you if you leave a rude and unnecessary comment on this - for the few seconds it takes to then delete it and cast it into the void.
> 
> Special thanks to Dreamcatcher's _Scream_ for sustaining me in the day it took to bash this out, the dialogue prompt "Am I meant to be scared now?" for influencing Kageyama's attitude towards Hinata, Ursula K Le Guin's _The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas_ for semi-consciously influencing the villagers' attitudes to Kageyama, and both Shigaraki Tomura's backstory in _Boku no Hero Academia_ and _Killing Stalking_ for fueling the intense need to write horror. I... don't think I've ever written something this graphic before, so it was both an eye-opening and somewhat concerning experience (but it was definitely fun, in a twisted sort of way, so there's that too).

* * *

“I’m home,” Tobio calls, shutting the door behind him.

Nobody responds. But then, when does anyone ever do?

They call him many things in town—a curse on the villagers, a blight of humanity. Tobio knows he had parents, once, and perhaps even a sibling, but nobody tells him where they’ve gone. Nobody _speaks_ to him, letting their curled lips and disdainful glares do all the talking for them, and he’s—

He’s not even sure why he tries, anymore.

How long has he been living by himself, huddled in a corner with threadbare rags and tattered blankets for warmth? How long has he been scavenging from the communal bins, grateful for leftovers the villagers deemed inedible but which kept him alive for that much longer? Tobio looks nothing like them, he of the pale skin and dark eyes and dark hair, but he’s still theirs.

Their shame, the elderly whisper when they don’t think he’s listening. Their sorrow, others say as he walks by, and it always takes effort to keep his expression neutral.

Tobio is the only child in their village, willowy and young in a way nobody else in the village is. They say he ate their unborn to sustain himself, when his family abandoned him as they should.

_Devil,_ they spit in his face, and Tobio had almost thought that his name.

But he huddles in his home, the ramshackle shack he built with cracked and bloody hands, and reminds himself of who he is. Who he _should_ be.

The village may reject all that he is—but he is Kageyama Tobio, and _nobody_ can take that away from him.  
  


* * *

  
“It was you, wasn’t it?” the village chief spits, aiming a kick into Tobio’s ribs. He hears two creak and one crack beneath the strain, louder than the whistle-scream of agony that rips from his throat, but the villagers only watch on with cold, pitiless eyes.

They found the body—or what remained of it, anyway—as he slept fitfully, tossing and turning on the uneven stone floor of his hovel. It’s in chunks, the largest no larger than his forearm and the smallest barely larger than a fingernail, but there had been no mistaking who it was.

The village was small, after all, and they cared for each other in a way they never cared for Tobio.

She had been pregnant, the soft swell of her belly now nothing more than congealed reddish-black lumps strewn across the village square. It’s not the first time someone had lost a child—but this is no quiet, grief-ridden miscarriage in a secluded room. This is murder, a death so violent that Tobio had tried to throw up bile and the remnants of his half-rotten dinner when he’d laid eyes on it, but the villagers had only clicked their tongues and shaken their heads.

“It’s your fault she’s dead!” someone yells in the milling crowd of drawn faces. “It was you, you _devil!_ ”

“Down with the devil!” the villagers chant, banging pitchforks and stomping feet as the cry rings out.

But it is always for show, always just acts of defiance that nobody takes further. They’ll make him bleed and beg for mercy, but they’ll always grant it— _just another way we aren’t like **you** ,_ they’ll say with cold sneers and colder glares. They’ll keep him alive until his next imaginary infraction, when he’s only trying to live his life in the village’s shadow, and Tobio…

Tobio curls in on himself, snot and tears dribbling miserably onto the ground, and tries not to think too hard about the bone peeking through his forearm.

This is the worst they’ve beaten him yet, and he _knows_ it’s wrong. _They_ should know it’s wrong, that a child whose bones showed stark beneath his skin could never take down a well-fed, healthy adult, but they accuse him.

And he—weak, helpless, _lonely_ —stayed so they could punish him over and over again.

“Now, now,” the village chief says in a lull, raising his hand until silence reigns once more. “This is a horrific crime, and we know that none of our number—”

_A number you do not count me in,_ Tobio thinks with dull resignation. He would be more incensed, but he barely has enough energy to stay conscious.

“—were responsible for this tragedy,” he continues in his grave, sonorous voice. “We are civilized, after all—and in our humanity, we will spare the curse that festers.”

“But it should be an equal exchange!” someone protests. “A life for a life—the _many_ lives this devil has consumed!”

Tobio, with his face pressed against the unforgiving stone and blood seeping sluggishly into the ground, manages a wheezing laugh in between his sniffles and sobs.

_Who is truly the devil here,_ he thinks half-hysterically, _who gangs up on a child because he’s **different**?_

“Of course we must have justice,” the village chief soothes, “and of course we must have a reckoning. But are we not human, that we may forgive? Are we not better, that we will let even such a wayward life continue—so that it might see the light someday?”

_It_. Not _he_ , and the irony of the village chief’s words forces another wheezing laugh out of Tobio.

A low, unhappy murmur ripples across the village as he does so, though—probably for the best, that they don’t take another gesture from him the wrong way and punish him more. He is a curse that can never do right, a blight that continues to thrive from their kindness.

Because, of course, almost freezing or starving to death was _thriving_. Right.

“Let us be the bigger people,” the village chief says, foot casually pressing down on Tobio’s purple-green hand, “and save it once more.”

Another low, unhappy murmur—but a few heads nod, here and there, and soon the entire village lets the anger drain from their faces and voices.

_But not their hatred,_ Tobio notes out of one swollen eye. The other’s too swollen to see anything out of—not that he wants to see more of them anyway.

It’s hatred that spurs the village chief to crush his hand before he lifts his foot, and hatred that keeps him from reacting beyond a twitch of displeasure when Tobio whistle-screams again at the pain. It’s hatred that leads the villagers to turn their backs on him, lying in a puddle of congealing blood and other bodily fluids that aren’t completely his own, and leave his supposed victim’s head staring sightlessly back at him.

They’ll come back to patch him up, just before he dies. They always do, to remain ‘merciful’.

_Just once,_ Tobio thinks, _I wish they’d leave me to die_.

_Ah,_ another voice replies in the back of his mind, _but what if **I** don’t?_

And even as Tobio blinks from the strange voice that _isn’t his_ , the woman’s skull splits open and a clawed hand shoots out amid a shower of bone shards.

It should be impossible—the skull isn’t attached to anything beyond a stubby, poorly-torn neck, and Tobio can still see what had once been a spine peeking out of the blackening flesh. Even if it had been firmly planted on the ground, which it _can’t_ be when it’s been so unevenly hacked up, no being should be able to claw its way out of it—

But there’s a forearm attached to that hand, black in a way that’s different to flesh undergoing necrosis. It’s black with _feathers_ , which make no sense because that’s a very _human-looking forearm_ beneath the plumage, but they’re there—thick and glossy, weirdly beautiful in the flickering torchlight, and they seem to devour light far more than the night sky and the shadows underfoot do.

Then there’s an upper arm, a shoulder that should not be _able_ to squeeze through a disintegrating skull, a torso and the rest of whatever _thing_ is emerging from the dead woman’s head. There isn’t even really _anything_ to identify it as a head now, eyeballs long since punctured and skin scattered in bloodied shreds, but there’s very little blood or brain or _anything_ dead-looking on the thing. Only the smallest flecks of blood on outstretched fingers, ones that soon disappear when a pink tongue flicks over them—and if Tobio wasn’t half-certain that he was staring in the face of death then he’d say it was cute. Maybe even sensuous, which seems stupid to think of this very inhuman thing.

The thing definitely reeks of death, though—and it’s only been about half a minute since it made its way from the woman’s skull, but it looks as though it’d emerged from the village chief’s large house instead. Its skin is creamy beneath the torchlight, where the feathers taper off near his shoulders and thighs, and atop its head is the reddest, most tousled hair he’s ever seen. Its eyes are bright, brown with golden flecks that almost remind Tobio of the sun, but this is no innocent creature of the day.

Not when its claws are wickedly sharp and flash in the torchlight. Not when curly red horns emerge from its hair, fading to black at the tips and just as deadly-looking as its claws.

_Devil,_ someone whispers—almost _sighs_ —and that shatters the false calm of the night, as the villagers finally break from their transfixed terror and descend straight into blind panic.

Because this is it, isn’t it? The village invoked the devil, wanted atonement for crimes they’d arbitrarily pinned on Tobio, and now… for whatever reason, it’s here.

And for all that he should be afraid, for all that his ears ring with screams and his heart’s going into overdrive, all Tobio can feel is agony and—somehow, strangely, peace.

The devil—because it _has_ to be, with claws that menacing and horns that large—doesn’t bother paying attention to the villagers shakily pointing pitchforks at it though. It doesn’t even _glance_ at those collapsing to their knees, praying for their salvation through tears and snot even thicker than Tobio’s had been, or the village chief as he futilely bellows for calm.

Its eyes are fixed on Tobio, even as it bends one knee and tilts its head to one side, and its voice is higher and clearer than he’d expected when it says, “You don’t look so good, there.”

_I’m not the one who might get run through with a pitchfork in a few moments,_ is Tobio’s first, irrational thought, but something about the crinkle at the corners of the devil’s eyes makes him feel like it understands, anyway.

“It’s your fault, isn’t it?” It’s barely louder than the panicked screams, but Tobio’s gaze finds a man paler than a sheet—a man that was, Tobio thinks, the dead woman’s husband. “You— _did_ something. Summoned that devil.

“Wasn’t it enough that you killed her?” The devil’s looking over at the man now, and most of the villagers are looking at him too—there’s tears running down his face, but his eyes are horribly empty. “Wasn’t _destroying my life_ enough?!”

_What have I done to you, to deserve something like this?_ Tobio almost hears—

But then there’s laughter, sharp and wild, and everyone’s eyes look at the devil’s brilliant white fangs.

“You’re saying it’s _his_ fault?” it asks incredulously, wiping tears from the corners of its eyes. “ _Him?_ ”

“Who else could it be?” someone whispers after a long, endless moment.

“Ah, right,” the devil replies, all innocent smiles and fiery eyes, “who _else_ , apart from this starving mongrel of a _child_ , could take down a completely _healthy_ woman in this _fine_ , upstanding village? When there’s so many strong men and women who are just _itching_ to kill this child and offer him up to me so I’ll… what, overlook all your sins?”

Tobio hadn’t realized that there was any warmth in the devil’s expression until there _isn’t_ —but the contrast is enough to make a few villagers moan in abject terror and others to begin sobbing quietly. It feels several times colder than the coldest of winters, colder than the snowdrift he’d fallen into some years ago and almost died in, and several people fall to their knees. If Tobio hadn’t already been on the ground, barely capable of keeping his neck craned to see the devil, then he would’ve fallen too.

The devil doesn’t seem to notice, though. It only smiles in a parody of happiness, eyes horribly flat, and then…

Then it turns back to Tobio, slides claws ever so gently beneath his chin, and whispers, “What do you want?”

There is no smile on its face, now, and its gaze is still devoid of emotion, but Tobio meets its eyes and feels no fear. Its attention is _intense_ , and maybe he’ll collapse beneath its stare even _with_ its claws propping his head up, but he’s more interested in his reflection in its eyes—his purpling bruises, his matted hair and sallow skin—and he tries to duck his head at the sight.

“Ah-ah,” the devil tuts, pressing the tips of its claws just a little bit tighter against his skin. “I need an answer, Kageyama Tobio.”

“So you _do_ know the devil!” someone crows. “I bet you summoned it h—”

Without once looking away from Tobio, the devil raises its free hand and negligently points in the person’s direction. There’s a soft _fwump_ , blazing light in Tobio’s periphery, and a single piercing scream before a fine mist settles on his skin.

“Oh dear, I made you dirty,” the devil says without an ounce of regret or apology in its tone, brushing the back of a hand against one of Tobio’s cheeks.

It comes away red and smells, very strongly, of iron.

Tobio’s more than happy to keep his eyes on the devil and _not_ think of how that villager is probably very, very dead now.

But that means he has to think about the devil’s question, and how exactly he should answer it. What _does_ one ask the devil for, anyhow? Wealth? Fame?

The devil giggles—an honest-to-goodness giggle!—and leans down so its chest is almost touching the ground. Like this, it can look straight in Tobio’s eyes without having to tilt his chin up, but it doesn’t let go even as it whispers, “Are you _really_ going to waste this opportunity, little one?”

“Kageyama,” he forces out in a horribly scratchy voice. “I’m not _little_.”

“Kageyama, then,” it replies, but there’s something more than just muted torchlight dancing in its eyes.

There’s something more than pain in Tobio’s heart, for this first moment where someone’s used his name instead of a derisive curse—but a devil quite literally has his life at its fingertips, and he wrestles his mind back to the question. If he shouldn’t ask for anything generic, if he should be kind and merciful in the way the villagers would probably want him to be—

Except they’ve never _been_ merciful. They’d only dressed their actions in pretty little lies, deluded themselves into thinking themselves _better_ when Tobio had never really seen anything _good_ about them.

Why should he be kind and merciful when they never were? Why should he be fair when they’re _not?_

And it’s as an answer takes root in his heart that the devil smiles.

It’s not mocking or false. It’s something Tobio might even call genuinely _happy_ —and even before he can open his mouth to reply verbally, the devil’s leaning in until their lips are almost touching.

“You would really wish for this?” it breathes, and Tobio gasps from the sweetness of its breath.

It might just be a trick of the light—but there’s more gold than brown in its eyes now, a shimmer that looks almost like genuine _delight_ in its gaze, and Tobio swallows painfully.

He doesn’t need to say anything to say _yes_. The devil sees it—takes it right out of his mind, perhaps—and whispers with a beatific smile, “I’m _so glad_ I found you.”

_Shadow mountain,_ his surname says—for the cursed existence he lives, for the dark aloofness in him that wasn’t of his own making. But there are no shadows in the devil’s bright, bright eyes as heat flares all around them and every scream is swallowed up in a supernova of light—

And as the villagers’ blood rains down on them in more than just a fine mist, this time, the devil kisses him sweetly and whispers, “You’re _mine_ now, Kageyama.”  
  


* * *

  
There are rumours of a ghost town deep in a forest, at the base of a mountain and once home to a few hundred souls. That the ground is a horrible rusty red, for all that the stones on the mountain are grey, with hints of white dust scattered throughout. Nobody dares venture near it because they hear eerie laughter, sometimes, or a high and clear voice intertwined with one that’s low and a little rough.

It’s not so much a ghost town as it is a lair of devils, people whisper fearfully. There are fires that flicker to life in an instant and disappear just as fast, come rain or shine, and anyone who ventures too close is never heard from again.

Tobio might resent them, if he heard those rumours. They’re unkind and vicious, like the villagers he’d once lived with.

But when he comes home to his lopsided little hovel, places a hand on the door and steadies his breath…

“I’m home,” Tobio calls, shutting the door behind him.

And the bright-eyed devil that fills his home with light and warmth smiles brilliantly at him through half-eaten intestines, and chirps, “Welcome back!”

**Author's Note:**

> Things that didn't really make it into the story include:  
> • Hinata very obviously drawing his mannerisms from his 'boss', Oikawa Tooru  
> • Kageyama slowly being turned into an actual devil through prolonged exposure to Hinata  
> • Hinata basically acting like an oversized house cat, beyond his love of eating/playing with guts  
> • Hinata jumping Kageyama's bones when Kageyama becomes sexually active  
> \-- but perhaps these will make it into future installments, if I give into the werebunnies and end up writing more for this 'verse.
> 
> For further author notes and other things related to this fic, feel free to check out my [blog](https://chiarosekuro.wordpress.com/). Alternately, potential prompts and other sorts of inspiration can be found on my [Tumblr](https://chroku-n.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/chroku_n/) if that tickles your fancy instead - or, if you'd like your own shiny new oneshot, you can request one from me [here](https://chiarosekuro.wordpress.com/commissions/). If you'd rather chat with me and others who enjoy either my work or my company (or both) in a more private setting, though, you can also join my [multifandom Discord server](https://discord.gg/cQrS2bW).


End file.
